Re: Alternative to ~= for inequality?

[Hadriel Kaplan <HKaplan@...>]

On Feb 9, 2013, at 10:28 PM, Paul K <paulclinger@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi Hadriel,
> 
>> quickly, but the '-' pattern command is evil... and seemingly unnecessary since it
>> duplicates '*'. (I assume '-' must have come first in some old Lua version)
> 
> It's not evil ;); it's different from '*'. It makes matching
> non-greedy (same as adding ? to a pattern does in Perl).
> 
> ("<foo>bar</foo>"):match("<.*>") returns "<foo>bar</foo>", but
> ("<foo>bar</foo>"):match("<.->") return "<foo>".
> 
> I'd say just use '*' by default (because this is what's needed most of
> the time), but when you need to match the shortest sequence, use '-'.

Ah, right you are, missed that... because using a '*?' for that would be crazy talk. ;)

-hadriel